Thursday, February 11, 2010

Tech Update

While the big three mountain ranges in southern California were blanketed under yet another foot of snow this week, I worked on improving my mountaineering-related cyber-skills. First, I finally figured out how to capture and edit a map image. Here is one such result:

Second, using the first skill, I created my first route page on SummitPost, for Falling Fir Ridge on Ontario Peak.

And third, I began the process of "claiming" (or registering) this blog on Technorati, a website that reports on the blogosphere, ranks blogs, etc. Technorati weeds out the technologically weak with a series of irritating hurdles. It took me eight (8) attempts to sign up. Most of the failures were the result of inadequate username proposals (though in most of those cases it was unclear what the problem was). Anxiety was added to this series of failures by my three-year old daughter, who was pacing around frenetically while repeatedly asking me to play and threatening to pee in her pants. After finally overcoming the sign-up hurdle, I was required to demonstrate proficiency with RSS and atom feeds, of which I had none. After some research, I bashed through that hurdle and arrived at yet another, which requires putting BCYQ45PKTV56 here. If you don't know what BCYQ45PKTV56 is, then you have no business being on the internet. Just kidding. But seriously, you really should look into BCYQ45PKTV56. If BCYQ45PKTV56 works out, then The Mountaineering Review will soon be on Technorati's radar screen.

Considering that it was not long ago that I learned, by trial and error, how to answer my cell phone, I am proud of my modest cyber-accomplishments. But this is child's play compared to what is happening at the Hiking Science Blog.